At nine years old, Samay (Bhavin Rabari) is thrilled to attend his first film in the cinemas with his father (Dipen Raval) and mother (Richa Meena).  The boy is immediately captivated by the images on screen, but is distraught to learn from his father that the film industry is below them, and that the only reason he was allowed to view this one was because it was religious in nature.  Not content to only see one movie in his life, Samay begins to skip school and sneak into the cinema, eventually befriending Fazal (Bhavesh Shrimali), the projectionist, who teaches him about the process and further inspiring a love of the movies in the boy. 

Pan Nalin writes and directs his semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama, Last Film Show, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2021 before gaining a theatrical, state-side release from Samuel Goldwyn Films.  The Gujarati-language film found great success in India, and to the surprise of audiences everywhere, it was submitted for Best Internation Film at the 95th Academy Awards over the blockbuster sensation RRR, though ultimately it missed out on the final ballot.  Whimsically shot by Swapnil S. Sonawane and scored by Cyril Morin, Last Film Show is as evocative a love letter to cinema as any of the Hollywood stalwarts’ exercises have been, as it seems anyone of a certain age in the industry has been just itching to tell their own inspirational stories.  Nalin’s film, however, feels like a direct homage to Cinema Paradiso (1988) more than any of his contemporaries, yet that does not detract from the personal care and love that is also clearly evident throughout. 

In his first role, Rabari lights up the screen with a joyful exuberance that also hides an impish nature.  Samay’s pure intentions help salve any brattiness as he and his friends work to create their own makeshift cinema in an abandoned building on the outskirts of the town. He is the ringleader of his gang and Nalin provides the boy with a role that really allows him to lean into the magic and creative nature of the imagination when it is allowed to flourish, even if it has to be done so hidden away from his father’s judgment.  

Our introduction to Samay is as he is playing on the train tracks, waiting for the next train to arrive so he can sell his father’s tea to disembarking passengers. Trains have often been exciting subjects for the film camera. One can look as far back as the Lumière Brothers’ The Arrival of a Train (1896), or to Buster Keaton in one of his many iconic sequences in The General (1926). David Lean, later, sees the train as a heralding symbol of freedom in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and some ten years after that Jean-Pierre Melville turns a metro train into a percolator in one of the most climactic sequences in Le Samouraï (1967); which is to say nothing of how Alfred Hitchcock would often use the fast-moving, closed quarters of the train car to intensify suspense and drama years earlier. But Nalin’s use of the train may be more evocative – at least to Western audiences – of Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me (1986), an enduring achievement in coming-of-age films, as Samay jumps and skips around the tracks until they begin to rattle from the oncoming freight signaling it is time to go back to help his father. The second time we see the boy return to the tracks, after having been enchanted by the movies, he carefully arranges colored glass on the tracks to see how it changes perspective and feeling when viewed through these recycled lenses. He sees the world anew, and while Nalin’s work came to screens first, this sequence forms an unintentional parallel with Stephen Spielberg’s telling of his own courtship with cinema in The Fabelmans (2022). The latter found another young Sammy (Mateo Zoryan), some 60 years prior to the events of Last Film Show and on the other side of the globe, who grows similarly obsessed with the world of film after his own formative theatrical experience, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and sleeplessly toiling away at recreating the climactic train crash sequence. While the Maryland-based Sammy will go on to put stories to celluloid, Samay takes a different path and finds his inspiration in bringing those frames to the screen through the magic (read: science) of projection.    

The train in Last Film Show, however, plays a much more symbolic role than anything; always moving forward in the same way that social ideology – hopefully – is, as well as technology. It creates an unfortunate metaphor for those who may have “missed their train” and feel left out and left behind by a society that continues to advance on beyond them. It is these advancements late in the film that counterbalance the saccharine nature of the middle act and allows Last Film Show to break free from being just another director reflecting on the spark that inspired them, but makes the film a poignant reflection of life itself. The film asks us to grapple with the concept of the cost of advancement. First, Fazal finds himself replaced by digital projection; the end result of the seismic shift caused by the advancements in digital filmmaking within the editing spheres having all but eradicated traditional film stock, not to mention the use of DCPs in place of reels that can now be ingested into projectors via a satellite connection and the cues for the auditorium, largely automated. Later, Samay’s father is also affected by progress as he learns the new rail patterns will find his station bypassed as the trains will be more efficient and not need to make so many stops along the route.  

The pacing and growth of the film unfolds with such charm and sincerity and Nalin shows great restraint in how he structures the narrative so as not to overwhelm or lean too far into the realm of a candy-coated memory. Samay begins just recounting the story of the film to his friends, before cutting school and sneaking into the films so that he has new material to share. When he befriends the projectionist and shares his lunches with the man, he also begins to learn the trade of projection while pilfering frames from the reels he helped splice in order to enhance his stories. Highlighting the group’s fascination, ingenuity, and creativity, they begin to build their own cinema out of the recycled trash they can find around the tracks and ultimately lift full reels of film to project in their own private theatre. It has all the magic of memories of adventures taken with friends, and that same joy felt by the gang when they finally get their projector working is infectious among us as the audience. Samay is the hero of this fairy tale, a unifier through storytelling, and while Nalin’s script does leave the futures of his supporting cast largely unresolved and in peril, we feel confident that Samay will be alright, and it helps end the film on a poignant yet hopeful note. 

Last Film Show is a real gem of a film that tells a simple story, but it is endlessly rewatchable and speaks universally to anyone who has ever been inspired, not just by cinema, but by stories, imagination, or friendship, too. Nalin reflects back on these formative years, admittedly, with rose-colored glasses allowing the nostalgia and the whimsy of childhood to present itself front and center on the screen, but he instills a sense of drama about the narrative as well. Its presence never pulls the film down, in the same way that a child can realize something in their parents’ lives has changed but does not always have the context to allow it to define them as they go about their play, so too does Last Film Show allows us to revel along with Samay and his pals as he enchants us with the latest tale he helped to put on screen. We feel that same wonder and excitement as these characters, and with Rabari’s revelatory performance, Nalin delivers a strong effort in a suddenly bloated sub-genre, and it is impossible not to fall under the film’s spell.